Triggered

I watched a movie last week about a man who, having worked in the porn industry for many years, returns to the small town in Texas where he grew up and tentatively reconnects with his estranged wife. The film follows our protagonist as he falls back into the same habits that led him to the porn business in the first place. It’s the kind of story that grants its viewers a look at a slow-motion train wreck; there is little doubt from early on how this tale will end. When the final credits began playing, I snapped off the TV and promptly plunged into an existential abyss of self-doubt.

It wasn’t just that the movie offered nothing in the way of hope or redemption for any of its characters. It was an unsentimental window into a world of drug addiction and poverty and dysfunction. This, apparently, is who these people were then and forever. My real problem was that I could see just enough of myself in its hero: his desperation, his fantasy life, his greed and scheming. The movie reminded me of every ugly choice I’d ever made, leaving me with the haunted notion that my life was as indelibly corrupted as the ex-porn star’s.

I was, you could say, triggered. I generally dislike how that word is deployed, suggesting an abdication of all responsibility for one’s experience. But in this instance, my response was so immediate and intense it was as if a trigger had been pulled in me, as if something had, in fact, been done to me. I paced around my house and told my wife I was sorry she had married such an inveterate loser. She shook her head and said, “That’s why I quit watching that thing.”

It's true. She abandoned ship half-way through. I stuck it out because our son wanted to keep watching and I didn’t want him to do so alone. He, by the way, was just fine with the movie. He thought it was “very realistic.” This is the very reason I dislike the concept of being triggered. If two people watch the same movie, and only one is left questioning the value of his existence, who exactly is to blame?

It’s true that if I’m going to trigger anything in my readers, I hope it’s their exuberance and creativity and compassion. But that’s me. Everyone should tell the stories they want to tell. Plus, that movie did me a service. By the next morning, I accepted that my life wasn’t actually the sad failed experiment I feared it was the night before. It was a pretty quick recovery, but I hoped that next time – and there will be a next time – I won’t the take bait, that I’ll make a different choice, and decide not to pull that trigger.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com